Lethal Rage (13 page)

Jack heard the car doors slam shut and knew he was trapped. He had left it too late and now they had him cornered, the Honda in the driveway proclaiming he was inside and at their mercy.

Karen and her parents were home from lunch.

At least Karen had let him sleep in instead of insisting he join them. Now that extra sleep was biting him in the ass. If only he had gotten up even ten minutes earlier. . . .

“Son of a whore,” he muttered, smiling.

If Karen or her mother heard him, he would be admonished for his language and Her Highness Hawthorn would no doubt tack on a lecture about how his vulgar expressions were a clear indication he was missing far too many Sunday mornings in church.

“Son of a fucking whore,” he said, louder.

“What was that, hon?” Karen called from downstairs.

Oops.
Stifling a sudden fit of giggles, Jack shouted, “Nothing. Be down in a minute.”

Karen and her mother were in the kitchen preparing a pot of tea — Earl Grey, undoubtedly; for Evelyn Hawthorn, any family meal was not complete until, regardless of weather, circumstances or illness, tea was poured — when Jack reluctantly made his way downstairs. Small blessing, her dad was out on the back deck, probably inspecting the quality of workmanship. Jack gave Karen a quick kiss and his mother-in-law an even quicker hello on the way to grabbing his lunch and post-workout shake from the fridge.

“Gotta go, hon. Duty calls.” He planted another kiss on her lips and was heading down the hall to the front door, thinking he had made good his escape, when Karen called after him.

“Jack, wait. I want to talk to you about something.”

Damn!
He turned but held his ground, the perfect picture of a man with places to go. Any place, actually, where his in-laws weren't.

Karen was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking as anxious as he felt.

“Can it wait, hon? I'm running late as it is.”
Don't do this to me, Karen. You know I don't want to be here.

“I thought Karen said you didn't start work until four. Surely it can't take you four hours to drive into the city.” Karen's mother had moved beside her, a united front he had little hope of defeating.

“Actually, on the last day of evenings we start at two and I promised my partner I'd meet him for a workout first.” It was the truth and the only excuse he had, but he knew it wasn't enough. When the Hawthorn women wanted to talk, you talked. Or, more rightly, listened.

“This is important, Jack, and I'm sure your little gym routine can wait a few minutes.” Mrs. Hawthorn — no “Please call me Evelyn” today — withdrew to the kitchen without waiting to see if he was following. Obedience was expected.

Jack hated it when she did that. He was tempted to give Mrs. High and Mighty a taste of her own medicine and announce that his “little gym routine” could not, in fact, wait a few minutes and get the hell out of there, but Karen's expression stopped him. She looked worried and upset. About what? Ever since the night of the search warrant, she had been rather frisky and even the news of Reynolds's murder — minus the backup shooter in the car — hadn't upset her that much because she'd felt he had never been in danger. All that had happened between then and now was . . . her parents.

Son of a whore.

“Where the fuck are you getting this energy? You're not stealing Tank's 'roids, are you?” Sy joked.

“Who needs steroids when you have in-laws?”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“After your set, old man. Quit stalling.”

“Bastard.” Grumbling obscenities, Sy dipped his shoulders under the barbell and hoisted it off the rack.

“Eight reps, no less,” Jack ordered.

“Eight?” Sy squawked. “You trying to kill me?”

“Shut up and squat.”

Still protesting, Sy squatted with the 185-pound barbell resting on his thick shoulders. By the third repetition, he had no breath left for protesting. By the sixth, his face was red and on the eighth and final push his knees were quivering and Jack could see his scalp turning purple through his cropped hair.

After the final rep, Sy took a wobbly step forward and let his legs buckle, dropping the barbell onto the rack. He hung from the bar, supporting himself more with his arms than his legs, heaving great gasps of air.

When he could stand without support and had his breathing under control, he glared accusingly at Jack. “You're just doing this to me 'cause I embarrassed you bench-pressing yesterday. Spitefulness does not become you, Jack.”

“What can I say? In many ways, I'm a petty man.”

Like a lot of guys who worked out, Sy loved to train his upper body but neglected his legs. He could bench-press three plates a side for multiple reps and took childish joy in Jack's efforts to press up 225. But now it was the day for training legs and although Jack overall was not as strong as Sy he did train his legs regularly.

They were in the station's gym, a small L-shaped room crowded with racks of dumbbells — the 150-pound dumbbells bought specifically for Tank were on the floor — benches and assorted machines. A wood plaque proclaiming the space as BIFF'S BULLPEN hung in a place of honour on the wall. It was usually a busy place, regardless of the hour, but this afternoon Jack and his partner had the place to themselves and Sy had a CD with a mix of Guns 'N' Roses, AC/DC, Metallica and Nightwish blaring out of the small stereo system. The acoustics were shit and he had the volume up to near-distortion level.

“So what did the in-laws do?”

“Karen wasn't overjoyed about everything that happened at the search warrant and then on the street with Reynolds, but she was beginning to realize that shit happens and we're careful about what we do.” Jack slid an additional forty-five-pound plate onto the bar. “And then she had brunch with her parents.” He rammed the plate into place. “She told them the whole story and by the time they finished eating —” another plate on the other end “— she was convinced that it's only a matter of time before I die down here.” Slam!

“And?”

“Hang on, let me do my set.” Jack cinched up his weight belt and got under the bar.

“Need a spot?” Sy asked less than enthusiastically from his seat on a bench.

“Nah, I'm good.” Jack straightened up to free the bar from the rack and stepped back. He readied his stance, sucked in a couple of deep breaths, then started cranking out the reps. His quads were screaming at him by the eighth rep, but he ignored them and forced out another two, shouting out his frustration and anger loudly enough to challenge “Welcome to the Jungle.”

“You're a fucking animal today,” Sy declared after Jack had racked the bar. “They must have pissed you off something fierce.”

Jack loosened his belt and dropped to his knees, wiped out by that final set. It had been an intense workout. Just what he needed after the little “discussion” in the kitchen.

“Part-way through the conversation — although it felt more like a fucking lecture to me — her father comes strolling in from the deck like he owns the place and adds his fucking two cents. After telling me, mind you, that my deck could use another coat or two of stain and not that cheap stuff I had obviously used.”

“You're not going to ask me to help you bury a couple of bodies, are you? I mean, I will, but you should have told me before the workout so I could have saved some strength.”

Jack laughed. “No bodies, but I won't tell you I didn't think about it.” He stood up with a satisfied groan and began stretching his thighs. “You should stretch, Sy. It'll cut down on the soreness.”

“I can't fucking stand up, let alone stretch, right now. I'm good right where I am.” He patted the weight bench affectionately. “Keep going.”

“So, they're all telling me it's too dangerous down here and it's selfish of me —
unbelievably
selfish of me — to stay here when I know Karen worries about me. Do I want to cause her a nervous breakdown? Fuck.” He switched legs, pulling his foot up behind his butt. “But, hey, let's not stop there! While we're at it, why don't we ask Jack when he's going to stop playing at work and get a real job? Something where I'm home in the evenings and Karen doesn't have to wonder if tonight's the night I don't make it home.”

“Whoa, they really dumped on you. Did Karen agree with them?”

Jack shook his head. “Only about it being too dangerous here. She'd like to see me transfer back to 32 or maybe work behind a desk somewhere safe.”

“What did you say?”

“Unfortunately, I told her she was married to a 51 copper and better get used to it.” He wasn't happy about what he had said and he knew his face showed it.

“Ouch. That's going to take some smoothing over. Trust me, I know.”

“Yeah, you're right. But I was just so fucking ticked off at her parents. First I'm not good enough for their daughter, then my job's not good enough, the house isn't good enough, the deck, the car. Then her mother starts in with the church crap. I'm missing too much church because of work, I'm falling away from my faith, I'm going to end up being one of those police officers who beats people just because of their skin colour, I'm heading to hell and I'm dragging her daughter with me. Fuck!”

“‘Sometimes even angels must do evil to fight evil,'” Sy quoted.

“What's that?”

“A line out of the Bible. Basically, it says sometimes even the good guys have to get their hands dirty in order to fight the good fight.”

“Cool.” A devious smile twitched Jack's lips. “I'll have to find out the chapter and verse so I can throw that at her mother next time she starts quoting scripture at me.”

“Don't go picking fights for the sake of picking fights. Her mother might be right, in a roundabout way.”

Jack gaped at Sy, flabbergasted. “Now you're agreeing with her?”

“Take it easy, Jack. All I'm saying is that you have to be careful down here. 51 has a way of affecting people. Changing them. I've seen guys who put saints to shame start working here and a few years later it's hard to tell them apart from the criminals out on the street.”

“You think that's happening to me?” Jack was getting defensive, not liking what Sy was saying.

“For fuck's sake, man, relax. Listen, we had a great day yesterday, we just had a good workout and, if we're lucky, we'll get into a scrap or a pursuit tonight. All right?”

“Yeah, sorry. Guess I'm still pissed.”

“Understandable. But take it from a man who's had three sets of in-laws —” Sy pushed himself upright, groaning as if he still had a barbell across his shoulders “— it ain't worth it. Let it the fuck go.”

Jack nodded.

“We good?”

“We're good,” Jack confirmed. “Come on, old man. We've got time for some calf work.”

“Oh, fucking joy.”

“5102, 138 Wellesley. Possible domestic in apartment 302. Complainant can hear a male and female yelling. Buzz 304 for entry. Time, 2037.”

“Something happening on Wellesley?” Sy asked.

“'02's heading to a domestic by the sounds of it.”

They were walking to the car with coffees in hand. A light rain, no more than a drizzle, was steaming off the Baker's Dozen parking lot.

“Who's on it?”

“Hang on and I'll tell you. Sheesh, relax, old man.” Jack settled in his seat and stored his coffee safely in the cup holder. “Whoever finally decided to equip police cars with cup holders was a genius. Too bad it took years of the computers getting spilled on before someone thought of it.” He pulled the call up on the screen. “Looks like Boris and Manny.”

“That's just down the street. We could back them up.”

“I thought you didn't like Boris.”

“I don't. But Manny's an okay guy,” Sy explained. “And working with Boris, it's like he's solo. Don't volunteer us yet. If Boris is driving, he'll make sure we get there first.”

Boris wasn't driving and he and Manny were heading into the building when Jack and Sy pulled up. 138 Wellesley was in a row of old three-storey apartment buildings across the street from Jarvis Collegiate. Normally, not a great source of trouble. But domestics have a tendency to pop up wherever two or more people try to live together.

“Hey, guys. Thanks for the backup.”

“No problem, Manny. Wouldn't want you going in there by yourself.” It was a casual remark. Sy looked at Boris when he said it.

Manny must have been the odd man out that day to get stuck working with Borovski and Jack couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Boris was everything Jack disliked about stereotypical cops, globbed into a fat, flabby, lazy, power-tripping asshole. Some heavy guys carried their extra weight in a firm, unrepulsive way, but Boris had loose folds of bulk hanging over in spongy bunches. Jack could imagine Boris as a child: fat, sullen and friendless, the type bullies dream of. He pictured that poor child harbouring a deep resentment toward society and vowing to be a police officer when he grew up “to show all of them.”

Well, here he was: a balding, friendless man who extracted his righteous revenge on society at large through his radar gun and ticket book, who gained sustenance through others' suffering and solace in fast food. Supersized, no doubt. Some of that drive-thru food and its stains — many appearing well entrenched — decorated the front of his shirt. As bad as the black shirt was, Jack shuddered at the image Boris had presented to the public in the old light blue shirts.

Here's your ticket, ma'am. Would you like to choose a snack from my shirt to go with that?

“What's so funny?”

“Hm?” Jack realized he was biting his lip to keep from laughing. He schooled his features, not without an effort, and told Sy, “Nothing. Tell you later.”